Generally, a front vehicle body is disposed at a front portion of the vehicle, and is formed in a frame structure capable of forming an engine compartment. Such a front vehicle body includes a front end module which forms a front end of the engine compartment in which a cooling module, a head lamp, etc., are installed, a front fender apron member which forms both left and right sides of the engine compartment and provides a space in which a suspension system is disposed and wheels are installed, and a dash panel which is disposed behind the engine compartment and partitions a passenger compartment from the engine compartment.
Further, a front end member extending in a longitudinal direction of the vehicle is disposed under the engine compartment in left and right directions in a widthwise direction of the vehicle, thereby reinforcing the structural strength of the front vehicle body. A sub-frame configured to support an engine and a transmission, which are installed in the engine compartment and a suspension system, is disposed at the bottom of the front end member of the vehicle.
The front end portion of the front side member is mounted on a bumper beam extended along the width direction of the vehicle to improve the front collision performance, and the bumper beam is connected with the front end portion along the length direction of the vehicle through a crash box.
In a case where a vehicle having a front vehicle body with the above structure collides head-on with small overlap with an collision object such as an obstacle or other vehicle while driving, that is, in a case where an collision object such as a small overlap barrier deviated to one side along the width direction of the vehicle and collides with the outside portion of the vehicle body, the collision object displaces the front side member to collide with the relative weak outer portion of the vehicle body, so that the vehicle does not effectively cope with a front small-overlap collision, thereby not safely protecting the passenger and also causing excessive collision damage to the vehicle body.
In order to solve the above-described drawbacks, inventions have been proposed for reinforcing the outer portion of a vehicle body to cope with a small overlap collision.
For example, a structure in which a front end portion of a front fender apron member was extended to a front end portion of a front side member and connected to each other by a connecting member, or a structure in which a reinforcement member for preventing infiltration of an collision object was mounted on the outside of a front side member have been proposed, but the structures were not effective in the front small overlap collision performance.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.